Sunday Book Review: The Revolutionary Life of Gil Scott-Heron

Sunday Book Review is a recurring feature devoted to bridging the gap between music fans and music books. We aim to give you a taste of new and classic books that dive deep into the psyches of musicians.

In his June 11 New York Times interview, Kanye West declared himself to be “in the lineage of Gil Scott-Heron,” the lineage of “great activist-type artists.” Though the extent to which this statement is true is debatable, it clearly shows the profound impact Gil Scott-Heron had and continues to have on hip-hop. Many “pop” listeners were introduced to Scott-Heron through Drake’s 2011 track, “Take Care.” The track is a morass of musical references, with Drake sampling parts of “I’ll Take Care of U,” off Jamie xx’s full album remix of Scott-Heron’s album I'm New Here, and then using Rihanna to replace most of Scott-Heron’s vocals. In the larger context of Scott-Heron’s influence this jumble makes sense. Much of his work has seeped into contemporary music in ways that are not immediately apparent.

Though Scott-Heron dwelled in many genres, the spoken-word, jazzy style epitomized by one of his most enduring hits, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” is often cited as “proto-rap.” In spite of this, Scott-Heron never went on to make any records that could be truly labeled "hip-hop," though he is often referred to as the “Godfather of Rap.” In typically complicated fashion, this title was one that Scott-Heron disliked, as he considered rap "aimed towards kids.”

This speaks to the seriousness with which Scott-Heron took his work. He was a musician, writer, and professor, who maintained a commitment to revolutionary thinking throughout his entire life. Though he publicly struggled with legal troubles, drugs, and HIV during his later years, his final studio album, 2010's I’m New Here, was considered a triumph by many fans and critics. After his death in 2011, Grove Press released a memoir titled The Last Holiday, which Scott-Heron was working on at the time of his death. We’ve extracted 16 of the most thought-provoking aspects of this posthumous work.

If there's one overarching theme that ties Scott-Heron's memoir together, it's his belief in “the Spirits.” He believed the Spirits blessed and watched over him, and that in almost every corner of his life, there was someone or something subtly showing him the way. Though they are generous, these Spirits don’t just choose anyone to help — their blessings derive from a person’s positive contributions. To gain their favor, you must give without thinking of what you’ll get in return, give the world “gifts” and not “loans.” Then, perhaps, the Spirits will bless your life as they blessed the life of Gil Scott-Heron.

Musicians are usually quite deliberate with the way they present themselves, and consequently their names, and especially the progression of their names, can often tell many stories in themselves. Scott-Heron’s dad, who was a professional soccer player for the Scottish team Celtic, wanted to name him Gilbert St. Elmo Heron. Not only was this his father’s full name down to the last syllable, but St. Elmo was also the middle name of his father’s seven brothers. Not to be completely dominated by the Heron side, Scott-Heron’s mother put her foot down and inserted Scott, her maiden name, into the equation. Her full name was actually Robert Jameson Scott, after her father, who was eventually committed to a hospital for the criminally insane in Bolivar, Tennessee. There was an expansive family history built into Gil Scott-Heron’s name, and from his birth to his death he never took any stage name, though he did get the nickname “Spiderman” (never fully explained in the memoir).

One of the central relationships in the memoir is between Scott-Heron and Stevie Wonder, who Scott-Heron toured with while trying to rally support for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Scott-Heron saw deep meaning into the fact that as Wonder’s career progressed, he stopped being known as “Stevie Wonder, the Blind Boy” or “Little Stevie Wonder,” and became just “Stevie Wonder” or “Stevie.” To Gil Scott-Heron, there was much in a name, and his choice to never use any other than his own should be seen as significant.

Scott-Heron grew up surrounded by crossroads, and in many ways his personal story is wrapped up in the historical changes of the time. He was one of three students to integrate his junior high in Jackson, Tennessee. Forty students had originally been signed up to integrate the school, but by the day before, all but two had reneged. Scott-Heron’s mother asked him if he still wanted to go. He didn’t back down. It all went smoothly, although he says learning about the Civil War was like “reviewing it from the loser’s locker room.”

Unlike a few other artists featured in this column (looking at you, Marilyn Manson and DMX), Scott-Heron wasn’t overly concerned with the material when he was a child. He was conscious of his mother’s finances, and didn’t like to get things that would “dip into them.” In a lovely passage that’s startlingly different from the opinions of many contemporary children, he says he “didn’t mind taking a little teasing on the basketball courts because I didn’t wear Chuck Taylors,” the “Jordans of that era," and says that he had what he needed to get by. Even as a child, you can see the shape of the values he would espouse as an artist.

Scott-Heron constantly hustled, but in a strictly legal fashion. Throughout his life, he maintained a staggering amount of jobs simultaneously, from the time he was a dishwasher, grocery delivery man, and paperboy, to when he was a writer, musician, professor, etc. The list goes on. He wasn’t one to ever want or seek the easy life. Though he did admit that he finally realized he couldn’t have it all with regards to being a professor and a full-time musician at the the same time, his life is a case study in taking on as much work as possible.

When Scott-Heron moved to New York, he became a reluctant pupil at Fieldston, a prestigious private high school. A teacher at the school had taken an interest in him in the way that provides the backbone for many Hollywood movies. Scott-Heron initially reacted against it, intentionally bombing his entrance exam. But he impressed the committee when he walked out of his interview, respectfully telling them that his mother had just slipped into a diabetic coma and he needed to be by her side. Once they let him into Fieldston, he started a guerrilla war against a crotchety music teacher who wouldn’t let him play on the school’s beautiful Steinway piano. Young Gil got the last laugh.

After attending Lincoln College for a few semesters, Scott-Heron made the decision that everyone’s parents have cautioned against since the beginning of time: dropping out of school to write a novel. In this case the novel was called The Vulture, and his mother was actually more supportive than his professors, one of whom reminded him that the novel was the “hardest form,” while probably sending his eyebrows skyward. Unlike most people who drop out of college to write a novel, Scott-Heron was almost immediately offered an advance for his manuscript. The only catch was the publisher essentially wanted to bastardize some major components of the work out of existence. Scott-Heron left two grand on the table (a substantial amount at the time), and he never regretted it.

In his memoir, Scott-Heron puts forth many moving off-the-cuff theories, but one of the most striking relates to truth and music, and can be understood best in his own words:

“People speak in a certain key that’s similar to a musical note. When you talk to people naturally, it’s comfortable because there’s no strain or stress on your vocal cords. Sometimes when people speak too fast or make vocabulary choices that don’t ring true, it occurs to me that something is wrong with what they are saying...I heard every word. Almost as individual elements, isolated as though they had nothing to do with me or with each other. But I didn’t tune in on his meaning until the middle of the solo...I heard him hit a false note, a note that shouldn’t have existed in this conversation. Something like an F-flat. There is no such note. Not for a musician. And not from one musician to another. not from people playing the same tune.”

Scott-Heron came back to college after finishing his novel, partially at the insistence of his mother, although he gives the impression that it was always his intention to return. When he arrived back at campus, he stepped into a hotbed of controversy. A student (and drummer) Ron Colburn had died during the three-mile ambulance ride from Lincoln to the town of Oxford. He was having an asthma attack, and there was no oxygen in the ambulance. Most of the student body saw his death as both preventable and as the last in a series of medical misfortunes connected to Lincoln’s antiquated medical facilities. The college administration had so far done nothing about it, so Scott-Heron organized a shutdown of the school. He facilitated a complete shutdown of classes, and eventually secured significant changes to the school’s medical facilities and policies. This incident speaks so clearly to Scott-Heron’s style — he was a leader who never led any organization, who could bring people together spontaneously around ideas and music.

After college, Scott-Heron attended a Master's program in Creative Writing at John Hopkins. He wanted to be a professor, and his dream came true when after graduation he began teaching at Federal City College. Scott-Heron believed he was a better songwriter when he was actively teaching writing. He attributes this to the idea of “economy,” which he considers necessary in both the teaching of writing (as most college students overwrite everything), and in songwriting (as there just aren’t very many words to work with). Unfortunately, as his music career began to take off, Scott-Heron found that he simply didn't have time to continue to be a professor. His decision to quit teaching didn't happen at the first brush of success, but rather, after much painful thought.

Even while engaged in a fight against the status quo, the ever-inclusive Scott-Heron had kind words for the white majority:

“There doesn't seem to be a lot of room available sometimes for me to express appreciation or friendship or an especial fondness for people who are not black. No, that’s not exactly true. the person doesn't have to be black, he or she just can’t be white. My occasional reference to Mark Twain or a Harper Lee or an Elliott Coleman or a Robert de Niro, or who the fuck ever, if they're not black it seems at times that I'm not supposed to enjoy them or appreciate their art. I’m sorry get over it! Scuse me if I'm wrong but isn't that part of what we were fighting against for years: the fact that no matter how good a brother or sister was, white people would not appreciate them. Wasn’t it bass-ackwards (a black reverse) when we were so thoroughly annoyed by the number of white people who would line up to see Miles Davis...”

Though he died before Occupy Wall Street began, Scott-Heron's views shared many commonalities with Occupy philosophies. He writes, “there shouldn’t have been any confusion in people’s minds about whether or not they were in a fight - all they had to do was look in their pocketbooks. Somebody done took their motherfucking money. When we got into things that related to politics, a lot of the time people would say, ‘Man I’m just interested in cash.’ And I had to hip people to the fact that if they were interested in money, that was the best reason to get into politics. There was a war going on in this country and you tried to find your best weapon.”

In his memoir he also promotes a decentralized view of political action. He says he never considered himself a politician and never joined any political organization, because once you joined one, “it made you enemies in another.” He seems to long for a sense of unity amongst revolutionary groups, decrying the fact that “various groups argued back and forth and wasted energy that could have been used to try to do something for the community. Which is why [he stayed] out of most organizations.” Many of these ideas have been popularized in contemporary protest, especially in the Occupy movements. Central to the current revolutionary zeitgeist is a deemphasis on organizations and a shift towards inclusive forms of popular protest.

Upon moving to New York as an adolescent, Scott-Heron said that New Yorkers “made you feel that you were beneath or beyond their notice,” and that in New York, life seemed to be about a “struggle against becoming nobody.” Though he spent a large portion of his life in New York, Scott-Heron was never one to be in awe of it or drunk on its splendor. His final album includes the track “New York is Killing Me,” and the lyrics don’t do anything to soften the title.

But before New Yorkers get up in arms, he’s just as hard on most other places. He thought that Texans had the biggest egos in the world, and that Texas didn’t ever live up to the hype. He also thought that everyone LA was out to use everyone else, and that after “How do you do?” there was nothing until “this stranger decided whether you could be used and for what.”

Stevie Wonder always called Scott-Heron “Aries” after his astrological sign. They had an astrologer in common: Amali from D.C. Stevie Wonder was so into astrology that he named his production company Black Bull after his own sign. Amali originally roped Scott-Heron into astrology by giving him the old, “I’ll give you a sample for free, and if you like it you don’t have to pay me” trick. Scott-Heron kept coming back.

Scott-Heron and Stevie Wonder were performing a show in Oakland when the news dropped that John Lennon had been murdered. An article came out the next morning in the local paper slamming both Scott-Heron and Wonder for not informing the crowd Lennon had been killed. The author said they were unworthy of being called the "Minister of Information" and "Ambassador of Love," respectively. The implication was that because John Lennon was white, Scott-Heron and Stevie Wonder saw no need to inform the crowd.

The bizarre aspect of this story is that Stevie Wonder did, in fact, mention the murder, with tears streaming down his face. But in order to get the article in the paper on time, the journalist had left the concert at 11:00 PM, before Stevie Wonder started talking at 11:30. In the age of instant journalism and Twitter overload, it’s good to remember that sometimes it takes time to get the facts straight.

In one of the final scenes of the book, Scott-Heron goes through his mother’s apartment after she dies. He writes he was “repulsed by his lifelong insistence on fucking isolation,” and felt like there was no one he could be close to now (in 1999). He goes on to say that he is not sure how capable of love he is, and that love was not an active verb in his family. The loneliness that he expresses is fundamentally different in tenor than that expressed by some artists like DMX (in a previous column). Scott-Heron was always surrounded by people, always in their company, but his isolation seemed to be of the mind, and seemed to be self-imposed. He reminisces that the mothers of all his three children would be better off without him.

The fact that Scott-Heron ends his memoir with a melancholy rumination on his own loneliness is telling. Though we know from other sources (and his own art) that he struggled for much of his life with alcohol and drug addiction, and had troubles with women, he glosses over them in this narrative. He puts up barriers. He is a master of prose, and this memoir is still lyrical and moving even with the sense that Scott-Heron is holding back, and isn’t revealing the totality of his life. Maybe in the end, that’s okay. Maybe Scott-Heron’s final words don’t have to fully include those aspects of which he wasn’t proud, those things he didn’t like to remember. Brutal honesty about his own life was not his main method of artistic expression, so this doesn't feel out of place, and neither does the reader feel cheated. He tells his story as he chooses, and will be missed greatly for all he contributed to American music and artistic thought. Rest in peace, Mr. Scott-Heron.